'Pain make man think. Thought make man wise. Wisdom make life endurable' : Sakini, in "The Tea House of the August Moon" by John Patrick, (1953)

Tuesday, July 3, 2018

The many deaths of liberalism. Daniel Cole and Aurelian Craiutu

NB: "Nevertheless, throughout the liberal and free world, many of life’s ‘greatest evils’, including slavery, abject poverty, unemployment, race- and class-based legal differences, and religious discrimination have been eliminated or greatly ameliorated."This assessment is gravely flawed, especially if the authors take the Indian polity to form a part of the 'liberal and free world'. (What is it, by the way?) Throughout the essay, the issues of capitalism and colonial-era 'liberalism' are treated either as irrelevant, or at most a tangential matter. Social theorising does itself a disservice if it misses out glaring aspects of history. DS
Modern democratic
governments are founded on liberal principles meant to create the basis of a
fair and just society. Liberalism emerged as a reaction against absolute power,
in favour of individual autonomy protected by freedom of conscience and the
rule of law. As the political theorist Judith Shklar put it in Political
Thought and Political Thinkers(1998): ‘Liberalism’s deepest grounding is …
in the conviction of the earliest defenders of toleration, born in horror, that
cruelty is an absolute evil, an offence against God or humanity.’ That is why
liberal principles include, among others, limited government under the rule of
law, with individual rights enforceable against the government.

Liberal societies have
not always lived up to these principles, which in some respects are always
aspirational. But it cannot be denied that political societies based on liberal
principles have been more successful, on almost any measure, than regimes that
are more authoritarian, communitarian or sectarian. So why do we read so
often today that liberalism is in crisis, failing or already dead? Scholars and
pundits of various ideological persuasions are busy signing death certificates
and offering obituaries for liberalism, often without clearly defining what
they mean by that term. Some claim that liberalism has failed to live up to its
own promises. Others argue that it has become irrelevant precisely because it
has succeeded in building a free society on allegedly dangerous foundations,
such as individual autonomy, neutrality with regard to the good life, and free
markets.

These critics might differ among themselves, but they all seem to
agree that liberalism can no longer solve our deep social, cultural, political
and economic problems, and that it has become ‘unsustainable’. Not coincidentally,
all of these critics are living, writing and publishing in liberal countries.
And they are demonstrating one of liberalism’s most successful features simply
by participating in the quintessentially liberal enterprise of dialogue and
disagreement under constitutional protections (with liberal limitations). These
are, in fact, the only states in which actual competition for power and dissent
is not just allowed but fostered. No one living in a totalitarian society has
had the luxury of declaring liberalism, let alone totalitarianism, dead.
Nevertheless, the pessimism of liberalism’s critics appears sensible, given the
current depressing political climate, dominated by fears of the re-emergence of
nationalistic populism reflected in Brexit and the rhetoric of, and policies
pursued by, leaders such as Donald Trump in the United States, Vladimir Putin
in Russia and Viktor Orbán in Hungary.

Yet, the prediction of
liberalism’s imminent demise is hardly a new story. Scholars and statesmen have
been declaring liberalism dead or in deep crisis for at least a century and a
half. A review of the many deaths of liberalism might have something to teach
us about what, in fact, is happening in the world today… read more: